Andrzej Zulawski, Polish Director, Dies at 75
Andrzej Zulawski, a Polish director who spent most of his professional life in France after irking the Communist government at home, died Feb. 17 after a long struggle with cancer. He was 75.
Zulawski was known for an idiosyncratic approach to storytelling and films characterized by “explosions of violence, sexuality, and despair,” according to website Culture.pl, which also noted that “the vision of the world portrayed in his films has been described as tragic, shocking and hysterical”; his methods yielded from actresses including Romy Schneider, Isabelle Adjani and Sophie Marceau some of the best performances of their careers.
Zulawski’s son Xawery, himself a film director, wrote on Facebook late Tuesday that his father was “terminally ill with cancer and undergoing intensive therapy in hospital in Poland.”
Zulawski had not made a film in more than a decade until coming out with “Cosmos,” which starred Sabine Azema and won best director at the Locarno Film Festival in 2015. Variety said: “Spinning a web of erotic and psychological intrigue, Polish provocateur Andrzej Zulawski dares audiences to make sense of his first film in 15 years. Knowing what to expect, Zulawski fans have been waiting since 2000’s ‘Fidelity’ for just this chance to be left dangling, whereas mainstream auds would sooner stick to more conventional entertainments.”
The cult director was known for such erotically charged psycho-sexual provocations as 1981’s “Possession,” starring Adjani, and “La femme publique” (1984), starring Valérie Kaprisky. Other films in his oeuvre included “L’important c’est d’aimer” (1975), with Schneider, and “Fidelity,” with Marceau.
Zulawski was born in Lvov, Ukraine, but moved with his father Miroslaw to Czechoslovakia and later to Poland. He studied cinema in France in the late 1950s; in the 1960s, he served as an assistant to Polish film director Andrzej Wajda. He made his feature directorial debut in 1971 with “The Third Part of the Night (1971), an adaptation of his father’s novel.
In addition to son Xawery, he is survived by a son, Vincent, that he had with actress Marceau in 1995.
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